“I doubt the ball really has anything to do with it. He is hitting that many because he has become used to (Japanese pitchers),” Kato told reporters Monday. This season, Japanese baseball has seen a marked increase in the number of home runs hit using the livelier ball.

Like any other baseball league the NPB and its records are subject to context changes, be it park size, ball composition or what have you. Rogers Maris’ home run record in 1961 was no doubt aided by league expansion. The home run records of the 90s and 2000s were the product of PEDs, expansion, smaller ballparks and — I remain convinced though no one has ever admitted it — a new baseball introduced in 1993.

What I wonder, though, is whether Japanese baseball is covered by writers who, like their American counterparts, pick and choose which objective empirical feats to credit and which to reject. And if Balentien’s legacy in the NPB will suffer as a result.

lol.. yeah did,nt notice earlier.by the way,like Thomas implied I am alarmed that any one able to earn $5546 in one month on the computer.
have you seen this site link > —- ►►►►► Ⅿe­rk­y.d­e/br17cm
Go to website and click Home tab for more details

I remain unconvinced by the ball conspiracy theories. At what point did the ball supposedly change back? Over the past decade the balance has tilted dramatically towards better pitching again, yet nobody has detected a change in the ball despite the level of scrutiny it receives these days.

I think its pretty easy to account for the offensive surge in the slate of tiny ballparks that opened in the 90’s, plus expansion, and then add in the slow down as the giant parks of the 2000’s opened often replacing older hitters parks, combined with scouting, development and advanced statistical approaches making up the gap on expansion.

Add in a little bit of PED impact and I don’t need a ball conspiracy for it to make sense.

I’m having some trouble with assumptions in this. First off while he calls out 1993 as the dramatic increase, in reality its fairly in line with what came before, it only appears so dramatic because 1992 was an off year offensively. While it is higher than most seasons, there are two exceeding it in the previous decade and several within .2% of it. According to the chart, 1994, a year not under suspicion for juicing the ball, is where the real offensive rise occurred and was sustained from.

Secondly, tossing out expansion parks and players is only part of the equation for determining expansions effects. There was also a expansion draft, which significantly weakened every other team’s farm system(twice in a decade). Diluted rosters decreased available talent to every team in the league, even the non-expansion teams.

And finally, he is tossing out expansion parks. But he is not accounting for(unless I missed it) the slate of new parks that were built in the 90’s, which I pointed out in another post. All but one park built during the 90’s were strong hitters parks, and several of them are extreme hitters parks. Often they replaced rather cavernous pitchers parks, and they certainly contributed to the offensive rise.

I also do not agree to his approach seeming to be that if he can disqualify the things he thinks are most likely, it means juiced ball. There is little evidence of a juiced ball, and even more importantly, much like PED’s, would such a small change have such a dramatic impact on offense? Its possible it could but I’d want to see proof, and I’d want to see how it has *more* impact than bigger/stronger hitters which basically accomplishes the same thing(more power driving the ball further). For the supposed change in the ball to have had such a dramatic effect, one would think the players would have noticed or that the evidence would be more obvious. If the change was very minor, then one has to account for how it made up so much of a leap without regular annual production variation being enough to have the same impact.

The first article is from 1993, which as I noted was *not* an outlier offensively compared to the previous decade. Perhaps Sosa did feel it was juiced, but Sosa was also a rising power threat in general entering his prime. As long as you stick to 1993, the conclusions seem pretty faulty since that year was only slightly above average.

And secondly, yes I do know there is research on this. I have not said it is impossible there was a change. I have only said there are a number of other factors, several of which I listed and which you have not bothered to address, that make far more sense for the degree of impact on the game. You replace a third of the parks in the game with strong hitters parks, you dilute the pitching talent league wide, and then you are surprised that offense rises dramatically.

Conspiracy theories bother me in general, it is lazy thinking and it pushes people towards a single solution mindset when in reality a multitude of factors was likely involved. It is possible that the ball did change. It is also possible it did not, or that the changes had negligible(or even negative) effects.